


In Pursuit Of Morality (Or A Lack Thereof)

by yuletide_archivist



Category: History Boys - Bennett
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-05-10
Updated: 2007-05-10
Packaged: 2018-01-25 02:59:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1628027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It hadn't exactly ended there, though.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Pursuit Of Morality (Or A Lack Thereof)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for rilla

 

 

 

 

_Good art can not be immoral. By good art, I mean art that bears true witness; I mean the art that is most precise._

-Ezra Pound

\-----

In primary school, Scripps always gave up chocolate for Lent for no reason other than it seemed easy enough.

It wasn't until two weeks passed and the temptation grew too strong - feeling the half-sin sticking to his teeth hours later and the guilt radiating from his face whenever one of the more sinister-looking nuns in attendance at Sunday service shot withering looks in his direction - when he realised that, actually, it was quite a bad idea.

Upon reaching adulthood, he's no clue as to why he decided coffee would be an apt substitute.

All throughout March, his eyes are red-rimmed and glassy, his drawn face off-putting to anyone who dares cast a glance at him, and he staggers through work like a madman, dozing at his desk at random intervals. It's a miracle that he even makes it home in one piece, and he's never been more certain of anything else when he collapses onto the well-worn couch, glances down at the newly-acquired bruises on his elbows, and loudly recites, "He was so old, his bones seemed to swim in his skin."

 _"Here_."

Posner dangles the paper cup in his face like one would a carrot in front of a stubborn horse, and it's _humiliating_ , and goes against the entire purpose of giving something up in the _first_ place-- and he accepts the present with gracious defeat, ironically thankful to God for blessing him with such a good flatmate.

"You do this every year. I don't know why you just don't give up something simple, like... like Shepherd's Pie, or something."

"The point is to give up something that you _like_."

"Give up poetry, then," and Posner - _Posner_ \- is actually smirking at him before turning back to a pile of homework that needs marking, and Scripps can't even retort because the caffeine hasn't finished settling into his bloodstream yet.

\-----

Johnston watches him distrustfully from behind his desk, the polished-until-gleaming rectangle of mahogany acting as an unnecessary shield for a man big enough to be his own army.

"Well?"

Irwin coughs, manilla envelope rustling between his hands, and passes it forward. Johnston's expression does not soften.

"This will be expensive."

"Sir, I know--" (and how bizarre is it calling someone _else_ `sir', after so long?) "--but actually, there _is_ a way to cover it."

Photography had never been an intended hobby for Irwin. It was just something he sort of-- _fell into_. The trip to Sardinia had helped, naturally. No amount of physical therapy was any match for a year-long holiday around Europe, going where he pleased, only the first few months hindered by his crutches. (Wryly, he supposed he could consider it his gap year.) The school had paid for it all, of course - lodging and travel expenses, at least - Felix not wanting to admit that a disabled man was unwelcome to teach at Cutlers' and insisting it was only "a well-deserved break" until he recovered, failing to mention exactly why the qualified UCL grad from Leeds was uprooting his entire young family to Sheffield if he was only a "temporary" fixture... and Irwin deciding, at the end of the day, that he didn't quite care anymore.

Taking pictures was a suitably _touristy_ thing to do, and he gladly embraced the stereotype, taking comfort in the shade of wide-brimmed hats and the cheap wine, snapping non-stop and developing at the local shops every other weekend. Learning to relax, for once.

It was only luck that he'd turned out to be quite good at it.

Johnston rubs at his jaw, at the greying patch of chestnut hair shadowing his cheeks, and hands the envelope back to Irwin.

"The hotel management themselves approved? Abrahams is one miserly little son of a bitch, I'm surprised he didn't charge you just for _looking_ at the damned building."

"Actually, I mentioned that it was for the spring holiday issue, and they offered us the King James suite for free. Their business has gone down since the local shootings in '89, and I-- well, I suppose they figure that any advertisement may do them good."

"What about the photographs, then?"

"Didn't you like them?"

"Hired a freelance, did you? I expect you'll be wanting compensation for _that_ , as well."

"Actually--" a slight cough "-- _I_ took the photos."

 _Actually_ is fast becoming Irwin's new favourite word.

\-----

Posner leans over the kitchen table, squinting down at a new batch of essays, and rubs at the bridge of his nose.

"Dearest Isabella," he mutters, the humour not lost in his voice, "whatever am I going to do with you?"

Isabella Regan, Scripps knows, is one of Posner's sixth-formers - a rather bright girl with a bold, dark gaze and more than an academic interest in her young History teacher. Posner, of course, had remained oblivious to her feelings until she'd one day cornered him after a tutorial and suggested they engage in another type of extracurricular, from which he'd respectfully declined.

"I'm not doing this for marks, if that's what you think," she had said. Although Posner hadn't mentioned it and Scripps had never met the girl before - had only seen her in the local paper, beaming in a group photograph of the school Debate Society - he imagined she'd pitched her voice higher at this point, adopting the tone of a hurt little girl, tricks of the trade often employed by his cousins whenever they were denied a treat by their parents.

"We can wait until exams are over," she'd urged (and at it was at this point, Posner had recalled, that one perfectly manicured hand failed in achieving its attempted annexation of his left knee), "and, _oooer_ \-- Dad actually has this great little cottage out in-- well, it doesn't matter where, it's only a few hours' time to get there, and we could go for the weekend and wear dark sunglasses and--"

"Miss _Regan_ ," said Posner. " _No_."

It hadn't exactly ended there, though.

The girl had more persistence than her tutors gave her credit for, as she'd taken to inserting 'innocent' suggestions into her essays to get Mr Posner's attention, sometimes mid-sentence. This prompted one Saturday morning of spit-taking tea over a pile of homework and Scripps scratching his head after discovering the cause to be an awkwardly phrased paragraph in tilted cursive about Richard III, his imprisoned nephews, and " _go down on you, the car park, next Tuesday, half past twelve, if time's okay circle yes/no_ " sandwiched in between.

"Far more creative than Dakin, isn't she?" Scripps muses aloud without thinking, then snaps his mouth shut. Too late to take the words back. For his part, Posner doesn't even blink at the mention of his former infatuation, and only smiles, wry and knowing and tired.

Of course he never says it (and he feels guilty as hell for even _thinking_ it afterward), but Scripps can't help wondering if she'd been born the opposite gender, whether or not Posner would have taken her up on the offer.

\-----

He's over thirty, now, but he doesn't feel it. Or doesn't look it, he should say. His face is still a canvas of smudged freckles, no premature lines creasing the corners of his eyes or mouth, and his glasses continue to knock back five more years. If he was a vain man, Irwin might feel some perverse satisfaction in the fact that career aside, he's found another way to best his former classmates, most of whom are already looking a little worse for wear at this stage in their lives.

He's been looking at other people more closely, he realises. Old and young, odd combinations of the two, stretched out and strung back together and spun around again; age doesn't matter, and perhaps it's his increasingly honed photographer's eye, the lense distorting and reshaping everything that it manages to catch, but--

He thinks that he's starting to like it.

A woman in a frail-looking shawl scrambles out an instant before the doors shut at Islington, leaving her newspaper behind. He snaps it up before the spotty, uniformed teenager sitting beside him can, and leans back in his seat, glasses sliding down his nose. Nothing in the headlines, save for a new study on the dangers of red meat consumption that could be almost interesting if he wasn't so damn _tired_. He flips to page two for the forecast, his automatic scan down the text halted by a box of jarring font changes, all punctuated by an oversized telephone number in an equally gaudy font.

Dark, familiar eyes grin up at him from beside the advertisement which asks if he's been unfairly cheated. Although he knows it's talking about taxes, the irony is almost too much.

\-----

The Arts Editor has a rather irritating habit of putting commas in front of her question marks, leaving the reader to wonder if the question is going to be continued on the next line. Any attempts at confronting her on the matter only result in an elaborate defenciveness that would be funny if it wasn't so _headache_ -inducing.

Scripps doesn't get paid enough for this.

He is struggling with yet another paragraph full of hesitant questions, this time on Duran Duran, ready to just cover the entire article with red pen and be done with it, before his stomach shifts painfully and he realises that he forgot to pack lunch for the day. The corner grocer has a reasonable enough selection of sandwiches, so he heads down there, eager to escape his desk if only for a half hour. He's digging around in his wallet, searching for change to keep from breaking his twenty, when the boy in front of him in the queue shifts, tossing his head. Laughing. Scripps instantly recognises him.

He's one of Posner's students, one of the ones he privately tutors - good-looking, about seventeen, flashing eyes and dark hair, rugby equipment slung over one arm - and for some reason, looking at him, Scripps feels his throat constrict.

(The business with Isabella was a joke, yes; then again, she wasn't exactly male, was she?)

He's not sure what makes him mention it, but before he can stop himself, the words come spilling out over afternoon revision. "I ran into one of your students today."

Posner looks up, eyes widened, feigned nonchalance firmly in place. "Oh? Which one?"

Scripps describes the rugby player, adding how he forgot to bring a lunch, and maybe he imagines it, but Posner's complexion, that fine, pale shade that always comes close to washing him out completely, seems to go paler still for just a moment.

' _Their soft faces blanched in the footlight glow_ ,' Scripps thinks, expression wary as he mulls it over. _Oh_ , Pos. _Say it isn't true_.

"Did he say anything?"

"No." His raised eyebrows ask the question that he can't quite, himself. _Why would he?_

And then he gets his response.

Unlike the time that Hector broke down in class, he's not frozen to the spot by vague surprise and guilt; he has no intention of later writing this down. He's at Posner's side in an instant, calloused writer's hands falling onto his shoulders, trying to settle them into the right spot, patting hesitantly, unsure of what to do next.

"I don't know what I'm doing," Posner mutters from the space between his fingers. Unmarked essays lay scattered on the table, forgotten, and the only movement in the room comes from his shoulders shaking in erratic jerks.

For once, Scripps can't think of the right thing to say.

\-----

"A photographer," Dakin repeats flatly.

He fixes him with a hard stare, as if expecting him to rip open his tweed coat and reveal the ensemble of billowy shirts and paisley trousers reserved for a man in such a profession.

"Yes," says Irwin, and the snap of the shutter is as good a telling off as he'll be able to manage.

"Well-- you'll be making loads of money off of this, right?" He seems to be trying to justify it to himself.

"Not particularly."

 _Snap_. Irwin pulls the neckstrap over his head and begins fiddling with the zoom, absently, before loading more film; it's as good a distraction as any.

Dakin shakes his head, eyes narrowed. "I don't understand you."

"I thought we'd established that long ago."

Back when he was at school - back even before the thought of teaching came into the picture - he'd always told his tutors that he was going to become a journalist. "I'll turn the world around with new ideas," he'd asserted, proudly, and had received symbolic head-patting in the forms of top marks and indulgent smiles. Photojournalism is another beast, altogether.

It's refreshing, almost. After all, you can't twist the truth with a photograph; post-developed manipulation aside, that is. Raw photographs speak for themselves.

There's something very liberating about the process.

It was by complete accident that he ran into Dakin at the little hole-in-the-wall café in northern London, the kind whose crumbling facades betrayed their ridiculous prices for a cup of tea. If he'd any say in the matter, this wouldn't have been his choice location for their impromptu little reunion, and he certainly wouldn't have been hunched over an interesting pattern running down the cherry brick outside, fixing his lense, while a tax lawyer in a hurry nearly spilled his morning latte over someone he'd mistaken for a mad beggar.

He's not sure which of them is more disappointed.

Dakin glares at him, looking almost offended (and - maybe it's Irwin's imagination - but also more than a little envious). "I mean, this - all of this! What in the hell are you trying to prove?"

Irwin just smiles - the wide, carefree way he used to smile before he became a fifth-former and started worrying about the real world - and replies, "Nothing!"

\-----

He's finally started writing his novel.

He swore he'd get around to it one day, and now here it is, taking up space on the study desk, shuffled to the side a few centimetres after Posner locks himself inside with his work. Home computers are slowly coming into fashion, but Scripps still prefers pounding away on his clunky old Selectric, the stacks of used paper he produces each day his daily reward as well as simple reminder that he's done something constructive.

Painters and poets often credit muses for inspiring their work, but he doesn't know if that's a fair label to assign to Posner. First, because it's quite likely that the novel is just _crap_ , and that would be embarrassing to them both. And second...

The rugby player - or Ian Naughton, he's apparently called - Posner never touched him. He'd thought about it, obviously, but that was as far as it went. He has too much self-restraint, too much pride to ever act on it. The boy who belted out serenades from Rodgers and Hart to showcase his feelings is now the man who buries himself in work to pretend they don't exist.

Scripps absently wonders if there will be others, then scolds himself for worrying about something that doesn't even remotely concern him. (Then again, that was always his nature when it came to Posner's problems, wasn't it?)

"What do you cover in your tutorials?" he asks one day. They're sprawled out comfortably on the couch; Scripps flipping through one of the more competent editorials, Posner gazing into his coffee mug, unfocused, as though its contents hold the answers to everything he needs to know.

"Swinburne."

Scripps jerks his head up, surprised, until he catches the other man's eyes, sees the gentle teasing in them. Posner laughs.

"I'm _joking_. God--" he runs a hand through his hair, settling it awkwardly at the back of his neck "--Ancient Greece, mainly. Naughton... he's rubbish when it comes to names, always mixing things up. Wants to go into Media Studies, though, so I suppose History isn't a bad choice for him to double it with."

"Lying asleep between the strokes of night, I saw my love lean over my sad bed. Pale as the duskiest lily's leaf or head, smooth-skinned and dark..."

The words pour out before he can stop them, rusty but still well-learned, half caught in his throat. His gaze never leaves Posner's, and he's doing possibly the dumbest fucking thing of his entire _life_ , but--

"With bare throat made to bite," Posner whispers, examining his neck with detached interest, and Scripps hitches in a breath, frozen in place. As if a single movement will scare him away.

 _Too wan for blushing and too warm for white_.

A Gainsborough print hangs above the couch, and if he squints hard enough, it's almost like looking out of a window.

\-----

An aged newspaper ad, curled at the edges but not quite yellowed, sits at the bottom of Irwin's desk drawer.

 

 

 


End file.
